Title

Authors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2005

Journal or Book Title

Journal of Physical Chemistry B

Volume

109

Abstract

We perform experiments on two different dense colloidal suspensions with confocal microscopy to probe the relationship between local structure and dynamics near the glass transition. We calculate the Voronoi volume for our particles and show that this quantity is not a universal probe of glassy structure for all colloidal suspensions. We correlate the Voronoi volume to displacement and find that these quantities are only weakly correlated. We observe qualitatively similar results in a simulation of a polymer melt. These results suggest that the Voronoi volume does not predict dynamical behavior in experimental colloidal suspensions; a purely structural approach based on local single particle volume likely cannot describe the colloidal glass transition.